Wednesday, 22 April 2015

Below is a short piece from one of my regular outdoor class students who's made some fantastic progress over the last 6 months.

Great work James!"Two years ago I was in an accident which ended me with a broken collar bone, since then I've not been able to get back the strength I once had in that arm and it affected my every day life. Since I've been practicing parkour with Brad and Southend Parkour, I feel my muscular strength, endurance and overall fitness has sky-rocketed. I'm now able to hold my entire body weight with my injured arm and last sunday I completed my first OCR.

Brad has been a huge supporter in helping people reach their targets and he is a great influence to better myself. A year ago today I would not have dreamed to have finished a 7km run and the only reason I hit the finish line is because Southend Parkour has helped me to push myself harder and has given me confidence in myself to do better."

Tuesday, 14 April 2015

Over the next few weeks our Friday junior classes will be changing slightly to ensure the best learning experience for all of our students. Parkour is a very specific practice holding an important focus on strength, physical and mental resilience, endurance, adaptability, flexibility, technical ability, understanding, problem solving and confidence.As such, we believe it is in our student's best interest to adapt our sessions to provide an improved offer for all. In short this means, over the next few weeks the following changes will be implimented:

Class 1 (From 6pm): Will be tailored for our newer/younger juniors with more games, movement and play-based activities and learning for Parkour.

Class 2: (From 7:20pm) For our older/more experienced juniors to challenge fitness and develop Parkour techniques. These classes will also expand on Parkour as a practice and our students understanding. (Suitability for this session will be decided by the coach and discussed with you over the next few weeks)

If you have any questions or would like to discuss further, please email info@southendparkour.com.Thank you for the ongoing support this year and I hope this will provide a better and more enjoyable learning experience for our younger students.Brad @ Southend Parkour

Monday, 6 April 2015

This week I've been away in Manchester, one of the 250 contestants on Ninja Warrior UK, which starts on ITV on the 11th April (This coming Saturday!).

For those of you unfamiliar with Ninja Warrior, it's been running for many years in Japan, known as "Sasuke", attracting both serious and not so serious competitors to see how they fair at a challenging obstacle course which increases in difficulty and complexity each year.

As the series continued, people from around the world have ventured there to try themselves against the courses and other countries, now including the UK have recreated their own courses to challenge and test people in their countries.

Here's a classic clip of the Japanese course and Makoto Nagano with one of the only 3 or 4 people to have ever completed the course:

After auditions alongside 6000 others from across the UK, I was selected and joined 250 contestants on the UK version this week trying themselves and their training against the course. I am unable to share how the show and my attempts went, so you'll have to watch the show which starts on the 11th to see how we all did.It was a fantastic opportunity to test my own skills against the course and the camaraderie throughout the show and participants was amazing. My heat airs on the 18th April but if you want to see what I'm certain will be a great show, record or set a reminder for this Sat at 7pm!- Public thanks to my girlfriend for joining and supporting me throughout training and the show, thanks Jenna!